International Amateur Scanning League will rescue our video treasures!

Boing Boing readers may be familiar with the FedFlix program, where Public.Resource.Org obtains government video and makes it available on YouTube, the Internet Archive, and our own Public Domain Stock Footage Library.

We took a big step forward today with the birth of a new club in Washington, the International Amateur Scanning League. These volunteers, organized by members of the DC CopyNight and by employees of the Smithsonian doing volunteer work after hours, is going out to the National Archives and Records Administration and copying over 1,500 DVDs to be uploaded to the net.

What makes this grassroots digitization effort so remarkable is that it has the full support of the government. Indeed, David Ferriero, the U.S. Archivist, joined me in the initial meeting where we taught volunteers how to rip DVDs!